Summary
The next morning, El Hadji is dressed up and having breakfast with Oumi. She brings up the rumors of his xala, and when she mentions that people around town were talking about it, El Hadji gets angered and leaves, telling Oumi it is not her time with him. On his way to the office, El Hadji then thinks that his best course of action to save face would be to impregnate and then disown N'Gone. Upon arriving, Modu sees to washing El Hadji's car, and he sits nearby the Beggar who sings songs outside of El Hadji's window. Inside, Rama is waiting for El Hadji, and she confronts him about the ways in which El Hadji's absence and single-mindedness (implying his xala) has affected Adja Awa Astou. She tells him that Adja is suffering and that he needs to help her, but she tells El Hadji not to mention that she stopped by to talk to him.
As Rama leaves, we then switch to her perspective and flash back to a few days prior, when she and Pathé went to visit Papa John on Gorée Island. Papa John decried to them the ways in which Europeans, who brought Catholicism to West Africa, are now acting secularly and in defiance of the colonial traditions that they themselves established. Moreover, Papa John mentioned that he will not leave Gorée again until after his death, and Rama said that this means that he will only see his daughter again in the afterlife (since Muslim women do not accompany the dead). The two then talked about El Hadji, and Papa John mentioned his xala. When Rama said only that her marriage to El Hadji has made Adja very unhappy, Papa John offered for his daughter to take his house on the island when he dies. The two then parted ways without another word.
Back in his office, El Hadji thinks about Rama and Pathé, and how he can see himself being a generous father-in-law after the two marry. He also reflects to himself that he could do so much more with Rama and her life if she were not born a woman. Turning his attention to business affairs, El Hadji is then told that his inventory is seriously depleted, that Madame Diouf has not been paid in months, and that his fellow businessmen are holding a meeting that night in order to interrogate him.
Concerned, El Hadji then goes to the President, who inquires after his health. Afterwards, the President informs El Hadji that the Chamber has been put in hot water because of El Hadji's bad finances: first, bad checks of El Hadji have given the group a bad reputation; additionally, El Hadji had earlier failed to pay back the National Grain Board for 30 tons of rice that he had since resold. El Hadji now feels just as threatened as he did when he was afflicted by his xala, so he goes to the bank in order to get a loan to fill in some of his newly discovered debts.
El Hadji has Madame Diouf write checks for much of his debts, and beyond this, he goes to the bank to speak to the deputy manager, another local African man. El Hadji explains his situation and appeals to their shared ancestry as Africans (referring to the manager as "cousin"), but the manager seems hesitant. He even directly confronts El Hadji about his bad credit history, which the bank has on file, but El Hadji appeals to such an extent that the manager agrees that he will talk to his supervisor. He tells El Hadji to call him the following day, and El Hadji feels another wave of temporary relief.
That night, El Hadji attends the Chamber meeting discussing him and his recent behavior. El Hadji is shocked, however, to find that his peers (the same people who had just been at his wedding) are now disowning him, saying that his failure to pay back the Grain Board and his bouncing checks look especially bad against the backdrop of his third wedding and lavish expenditures. They argue that El Hadji's behavior dishonors their Chamber, and they call for his expulsion. Defending himself, El Hadji then appeals to the fact that they have all had financial trouble, and, moreover, the fact that they are all just mere middlemen and fronts for foreign interests and companies. Such realistic talk is not received well by his colleagues, however, and they accuse him of slandering them and demeaning their accomplishments. They then unanimously vote for his expulsion from the chamber. Dejected, El Hadji then returns to Adja's home, where he talks with Rama about her Wolof language newspaper. Though El Hadji is happy to have a moment of peace, Adja also tells him that Yay Bineta called after him.
The next day, El Hadji leaves home and runs into the minibus with all of his children inside. Mariem asks him if he is thinking about Mactar's car, and El Hadji says that he is thinking about it, which leads Mariem to tell her sibling that El Hadji is always disappointing her. At the office, El Hadji then is told by Madame Diouf that his checks to pay her rent and wages have bounced, leaving her upset and living on credit. He apologizes and tells her to just give him a few more days, and just then, a white man from an automobile creditor arrives. He tells El Hadji that they are aware of his financial situation, and that he needs to settle his account with them in the next three days or else. In the back, the irritating wail of the Beggar can be heard. Then, after this man leaves, an emissary of Sereen Mada arrives, telling El Hadji that he has been sent by the healer. El Hadji thinks that this can be his opportunity to rescue himself from ill fortune, so he offers to receive this messenger at his home and then visit Sereen Mada again, but the visitor tells him only that the check bounced and that Sereen Mada will restore his xala. Later, Modu tells El Hadji that the man who was just in his office was not a messenger, but rather Sereen Mada himself, but as El Hadji chases after him, it is far too late. Returning to his resting place outside El Hadji's office, Modu then tells the Beggar about Sereen Mada restoring El Hadji's xala. Shockingly, the Beggar then tells Modu that he will take away El Hadji's xala for free, if only he does one thing that the Beggar requests.
Analysis
Though we have already seen El Hadji's situation grow more and more dire in previous parts of the novel, the previous section ended with a sense of stability and return to order when Sereen Mada cured El Hadji of his xala—or so we were led to believe. Here, then, we watch catastrophically as the true collapse of El Hadji's life is precipitated. Especially when compared to the dynamics of the previous section, those contained within this section strike readers as even more severe and destructive. This is particularly true in the realms of the financial, the political, and the familial, as well as in light of the rapidly failing integrity of El Hadji and those around him.
First, it is important to note how the financial and ritualistic once again clash in this section, albeit in a pointedly different way from where the previous section left us. The last section concluded with finances almost being an afterthought in the pursuit of ritualistic healing (i.e., El Hadji's vast expenditures on different marabouts in a desperate effort to be cured), and El Hadji paid little to no attention to Sereen Mada's warning about the possible ritual consequences of fiscal insolvency. Here, however, we learn that finances do indeed take precedence in the real world, and Sereen Mada returning El Hadji's xala for lack of payment is all the proof that we need of this claim. Relatedly, looking forward to the novel's conclusion, readers ought to note the established importance of money in the text and treat the Beggar's claim that he will heal El Hadji with extreme skepticism. Moreover, readers should begin to think of the Beggar as a more important character in the text, since we have seen both evidence of his desire to be paid (i.e., for washing cars), as well as a desire to participate in certain rituals without assured payment (i.e., his singing). One does well to consider exactly what his motivations could be as we anticipate the close of the text.
It is not just in the realm of the ritualistic that El Hadji's financial troubles accelerate, however. His financial troubles also begin to significantly impact his business life, with real color being given to these business-related costs for the first time in the text. Whereas in the past we were told only that El Hadji's business relationships were suffering, this becomes far more concrete in this section with things like his shop's inventory, Madame Diouf's wages, his automobile loans, and the repayment he was due to make to the National Grain Board. In every case, we begin to see for the first time that El Hadji is not as wealthy as he once appeared, but it is also important to note that each instance represents a different level of failure and indebtedness. He is not just failing to pay back his own loans, but his greed and insolvency have also jeopardized his secretary, his clients, and his peers' Chamber of Commerce. By placing El Hadji, our protagonist, right at the center of such failure and shame, we get a sense of just how exploitative El Hadji truly is, and Sembène's satire comes through at its strongest.
Regarding El Hadji's involvement with the Chamber in this section, it is also key to note the way in which El Hadji's failure leads to his callout of the neocolonial systems which once enshrined him as a member of the comprador bourgeoisie. When El Hadji is put in the hot seat and backed into a financial and political corner, he does not take responsibility, instead deflecting it towards the larger inequities that exist within Senegal, such as locals fronting for foreign business and political interests. This is deeply satirical, considering that this is the first time El Hadji has such a self-deprecating and self-aware thing to say in the entire text. Moreover, a double irony comes through in the fact that, when El Hadji mentions the truth of the unequal society that props him and his cronies up, they react with increased hostility and determination to expel him. Most disarmingly, however, El Hadji's situation with the Chamber can be boiled down to the fact that the Chamber only consists of the wealthy, and El Hadji's recent monetary troubles have shown that he is not wealthy anymore, and thus not welcome among their ranks. Even El Hadji himself seems to think that this is the case: "Our country is a plutocracy" (85).
Another important aspect of El Hadji's life that implodes in this section is the complex family life that we have become accustomed to in the earlier parts of the text. Whereas Oumi earlier pressured El Hadji for a car, here Mariem explicitly tells her father that he is a disappointment in his failure to materially provide for them. Whereas earlier Rama opposed her father in the home, here she appears in his office and demands that El Hadji step up his involvement in Adja Awa Astou's life. Additionally, note here that Papa John here for the first time totally rejects the idea that he will come to Adja again in his lifetime, another dimension of familial dissolution which compounds the already serious situation at hand. There is a sense that the family unit of Adja, El Hadji, and Rama is not totally endangered, particularly in the fact that they all share some basic cultural values and assumptions (like the use and appreciation of the Wolof language), but even this is stunted by El Hadji's own admission that he cannot do much for Rama, since she is a woman.
Something more fundamental to which many of these trends gesture is a general deterioration of integrity as the text advances. Whereas, earlier, El Hadji was able to pay people off and at least back up his various interests, he now lacks the buying power to back up his desires. He claims he will fix something or pay a certain person for their services, but they routinely come back to him and complain that he did not follow through with his earlier word. Even in his marriage to N'Gone, he now contemplates things that are of a wholly new degree of waywardness (i.e., impregnating her and divorcing her). Such a lack of integrity comes through when he appeals to the bank manager as well. It is also this lack of integrity that leads Sereen Mada to restore his illness at the end of this section. Where we are left, then, is pondering the integrity of the Beggar outside El Hadji's office who offers to cure him for free. We are also made to compare something like El Hadji's deteriorating integrity with constant, stable things like the Beggar's chant. Why is one thing almost omnipresent, but forced into the background, while El Hadji's integrity is illusorily magnified and forced to the forefront of readers' minds? Our answer comes in the form of the novel's explosive last 13 pages.
